Iran: The Next War

by John Pilger

Has Tony Blair, our minuscule Caesar, finally
crossed his Rubicon? Having subverted the laws of the civilized world and brought
carnage to a defenseless people and bloodshed to his own, having lied and lied
and used the death of a hundredth British soldier in Iraq to indulge his profane
self-pity, is he about to collude in one more crime before he goes?

Perhaps he is seriously unstable now, as some have suggested. Power does bring
a certain madness to its prodigious abusers, especially those of shallow disposition.
In The
March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, the great American historian Barbara
Tuchman described Lyndon B. Johnson, the president whose insane policies took
him across his Rubicon in Vietnam. "He lacked [John] Kennedy's ambivalence,
born of a certain historical sense and at least some capacity for reflective
thinking," she wrote. "Forceful and domineering, a man infatuated with himself,
Johnson was affected in his conduct of Vietnam policy by three elements in his
character: an ego that was insatiable and never secure; a bottomless capacity
to use and impose the powers of his office without inhibition; a profound aversion,
once fixed upon a course of action, to any contradictions."

That, demonstrably, is Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the cabal that
has seized power in Washington. But there is a logic to their idiocy –
the goal of dominance. It also describes Blair, for whom the only logic is vainglorious.
And now he is threatening to take Britain into the nightmare on offer in Iran.
His Washington mentors are unlikely to ask for British troops, not yet. At first,
they will prefer to bomb from a safe height, as Bill Clinton did in his destruction
of Yugoslavia. They are aware that, like the Serbs, the Iranians are a serious
people with a history of defending themselves and who are not stricken by the
effects of a long siege, as the Iraqis were in 2003. When the Iranian defense
minister promises "a crushing response," you sense he means it.

Listen to Blair in the House of Commons: "It's important we send a signal of
strength" against a regime that has "forsaken diplomacy" and is "exporting terrorism"
and "flouting its international obligations." Coming from one who has exported
terrorism to Iran's neighbor, scandalously reneged on Britain's most sacred
international obligations and forsaken diplomacy for brute force, these are
Alice-through-the-looking-glass words.

However, they begin to make sense when you read Blair's Commons speeches on
Iraq of Feb. 25 and March 18, 2003. In both crucial debates – the latter leading
to the disastrous vote on the invasion – he used the same or similar expressions
to lie that he remained committed to a peaceful resolution. "Even now, today,
we are offering Saddam the prospect of voluntary disarmament..." he said. From
the revelations in Philippe Sands' book Lawless
World, the scale of his deception is clear. On Jan. 31, 2003, Bush and
Blair confirmed their earlier secret decision to attack Iraq.

Like the invasion of Iraq, an attack on Iran has a secret agenda that has nothing
to do with the Tehran regime's imaginary weapons of mass destruction. That Washington
has managed to coerce enough members of the International Atomic Energy Agency
into participating in a diplomatic charade is no more than reminiscent of the
way it intimidated and bribed the "international community" into attacking Iraq
in 1991.

Iran offers no "nuclear threat." There is not the slightest evidence that it
has the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium to weapons-grade material. The
head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has repeatedly said his inspectors have
found nothing to support American and Israeli claims. Iran has done nothing
illegal; it has demonstrated no territorial ambitions nor has it engaged in
the occupation of a foreign country – unlike the United States, Britain and
Israel. It has complied with its obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty
to allow inspectors to "go anywhere and see anything" – unlike the US and Israel.
The latter has refused to recognize the NPT, and has between 200 and 500 thermonuclear
weapons targeted at Iran and other Middle Eastern states.

Those who flout the rules of the NPT are America's and Britain's anointed friends.
Both India and Pakistan have developed their nuclear weapons secretly and in
defiance of the treaty. The Pakistani military dictatorship has openly exported
its nuclear technology. In Iran's case, the excuse that the Bush regime has
seized upon is the suspension of purely voluntary "confidence-building" measures
that Iran agreed with Britain, France and Germany in order to placate the US
and show that it was "above suspicion." Seals were placed on nuclear equipment
following a concession given, some say foolishly, by Iranian negotiators and
which had nothing to do with Iran's obligations under the NPT.

Iran has since claimed back its "inalienable right" under the terms of the
NPT to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. There is no doubt this decision
reflects the ferment of political life in Tehran and the tension between radical
and conciliatory forces, of which the bellicose new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
is but one voice. As European governments seemed to grasp for a while, this
demands true diplomacy, especially given the history.

For more than half a century, Britain and the US have menaced Iran. In 1953,
the CIA and MI6 overthrew the democratic government of Mohammed Mossadegh, an
inspired nationalist who believed that Iranian oil belonged to Iran. They installed
the venal shah and, through a monstrous creation called SAVAK, built one of
the most vicious police states of the modern era. The Islamic revolution in
1979 was inevitable and very nasty, yet it was not monolithic and, through popular
pressure and movement from within the elite, Iran has begun to open to the outside
world – in spite of having sustained an invasion by Saddam Hussein, who was
encouraged and backed by the US and Britain.

At the same time, Iran has lived with the real threat of an Israeli attack,
possibly with nuclear weapons, about which the "international community" has
remained silent. Recently, one of Israel's leading military historians, Martin
van Creveld, wrote: "Obviously, we don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons and
I don't know if they're developing them, but if they're not developing them,
they're crazy."

It is hardly surprising that the Tehran regime has drawn the "lesson" of how
North Korea, which has nuclear weapons, has successfully seen off the American
predator without firing a shot. During the cold war, British "nuclear deterrent"
strategists argued the same justification for arming the nation with nuclear
weapons; the Russians were coming, they said. As we are aware from declassified
files, this was fiction, unlike the prospect of an American attack on Iran,
which is very real and probably imminent.

Blair knows this. He also knows the real reasons for an attack and the part
Britain is likely to play. Next month, Iran is scheduled to shift its petrodollars
into a euro-based bourse. The effect on the value of the dollar will be significant,
if not, in the long term, disastrous. At present the dollar is, on paper, a
worthless currency bearing the burden of a national debt exceeding $8 trillion
and a trade deficit of more than $600 billion. The cost of the Iraq adventure
alone, according to the Nobel Prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz, could
be $2 trillion. America's military empire, with its wars and 700-plus bases
and limitless intrigues, is funded by creditors in Asia, principally China.

That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the dollar as the
world's reserve currency. What the Bush regime fears is not Iran's nuclear ambitions
but the effect of the world's fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking
the dollar monopoly. Will the world's central banks then begin to shift their
reserve holdings and, in effect, dump the dollar? Saddam Hussein was threatening
to do the same when he was attacked.

While the Pentagon has no plans to occupy all of Iran, it has in its sights
a strip of land that runs along the border with Iraq. This is Khuzestan, home
to 90 percent of Iran's oil. "The first step taken by an invading force," reported
Beirut's Daily Star, "would be to occupy Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan Province,
securing the sensitive Straits of Hormuz and cutting off the Iranian military's
oil supply." On Jan. 28 the Iranian government said that it had evidence of
British undercover attacks in Khuzestan, including bombings, over the past year.
Will the newly emboldened Labour MPs pursue this? Will they ask what the British
army based in nearby Basra – notably the SAS – will do if or when Bush begins
bombing Iran? With control of the oil of Khuzestan and Iraq and, by proxy, Saudi
Arabia, the US will have what Richard Nixon called "the greatest prize of all."

But what of Iran's promise of "a crushing response"? Last year, the Pentagon
delivered 500 "bunker-busting" bombs to Israel. Will the Israelis use them against
a desperate Iran? Bush's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review cites "preemptive" attack
with so-called low-yield nuclear weapons as an option. Will the militarists
in Washington use them, if only to demonstrate to the rest of us that, regardless
of their problems with Iraq, they are able to "fight and win multiple, simultaneous
major-theater wars," as they have boasted? That a British prime minister should
collude with even a modicum of this insanity is cause for urgent action on this
side of the Atlantic.

John
Pilger was
born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent,
film-maker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from
many countries and has twice won British journalism's highest award,
that of "Journalist of the Year," for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia.

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